From the dimestore to the country,
Jessen twangs on
By Richard Shirk - The Daily Iowan (11-2002)

Like me, the man walking into the normally sedate George's didn't expect the wall of noise from the 40 football fans crowded around beer and $2.50 burgers.

Tom Jessen recognizes me from the tape recorder and the beat-up copy of his latest album, Night (East Elm) that sits on the scratched surface of the Formica tabletop. The Iowa City local will release Night, his first album since 1996, at Gabe's on Saturday.

Talking to Jessen about the his album quickly turns into talking Iowa City rock 'n' roll — a topic that inevitably turns to dead venues, disbanded bands, the Record Collector, and great shows witnessed over the years.

Jessen has been in those broken-up bands, played at dead venues, such as the Yacht Club, and scanned the Record Collector bins before the store was replaced by a parking garage. Used CDs were still a novelty. Arriving in town as a UI student, his nights were spent at Gabe's watching bands or being a part of them. His bands Peterbuilt and Devastation Wagon played in the late-80s and early '90s with car-crash rock 'n' roll that siphoned the drunk-punk energy of a band such as the Replacements into 40-minute sets and five-chord songs.

These bands are a far cry from what Jessen's music would eventually evolve into over the years. The stacks and stomp boxes have long since been traded in for pedal-steel guitars, and his newfound singer/songwriter-oriented material has earned a place on bills with Wilco, Junior Brown, and Son Volt.

My introduction to Jessen's music was an extended solo opening set that turned the disappointment of a canceled Jay Bennett show in August into a hijacked showcase for his twanging pop songs. Unflaggingly humble, Jessen is more comfortable talking about Iowa City's roots-rock tradition or Joe Strummer's solo albums than his own work. For Jessen, Night, even though his own music, is not for him to decipher.

"People are always going to approach [music] with their own emotional baggage and perspective," he said. "Ever since I made the first one, I am really under the opinion that … I make these songs and put this effort into it, and when I'm done with it, I'm done with it. I have to cut the umbilical cord and really can't say anything more about it."

The songs on Night, however, seem to fill in any gaps and connect any dots as I talked to Jessen about growing up in Strawberry Point, Iowa (population 1,336), his brief time in a seminary, and his sudden move to Portland on a whim. Besides existing as finely crafted examples of Jessen's studio perfectionism and talent as a lyricist, Night is deeply imprinted with a subtext of locality, restlessness, and a definite Midwestern perspective.

When Jessen sings "I'm buried in a crowd of sliding poker faces … and I knew somebody else was putting thoughts in my head/well, we hang around this town like cobwebs/dusting off conversations and compliments" in "Go Easy On My Eyes," the sincerity in his voice is not debatable. The vocal harmonies and subtle keyboards (courtesy of the Diplomat's Nate Bassinger) of "Go Easy" are upbeat sonically yet lyrically resigned, if not downright bleak.

"All Those Treasure Daggers" and "Eulogy" carry on this dichotomy, while "River" and "Let Me Let" are unabashed shit-kicker ballads. There is pedal steel, gentle fingerpicked guitar, and a twang in Jessen's voice, but this is a style of insurgent country written more from the blueprints of XTC or Squeeze albums than Hank Jr. tapes.

With this fresh take on the often homogenous alt.country/roots-rock scene, Jessen has penned an album that not only stretches the boundaries of this talent-rich facet of Iowa City music but manages to do so while ignoring the rules of the genre.

E-mail DI reporter Richard Shirk at:

rshirk@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu